


Pack Mentalities

by Leonawriter



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: F/M, Gen, Wolf Instincts, Wolf link - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:50:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The transformation from human to wolf was far more than just physical, and it takes some time to get used to. Link also finds out that it isn’t about to go away whenever it’s convenient for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pack Mentalities

The first thing he noticed about being a wolf, waking up in the Twilight, the first thing that truly  _scared_ him - aside from the fact that he had been imprisoned, aside from the chain on his arm (foreleg) - was the fact that his head had suddenly and without warning started to work completely differently to how he was used to it being.

He was a goat herder.  _Just_ a goat herder. A good one, maybe - but facts were facts, and he only knew how to use a sword in case wild beasts or monsters got near the herd or raiders came too close to Ordon and someone was needed to fight. Skills he was never expected to have to use in abundance.

But his mind cared little for suppositions like those. Merely that it was  _cold dark wet alone_ and that he was _hungry-thirsty_ with the pain from the attack at the spring still wearing off in waves.

He wanted - needed - to get out, to escape, to claw at the chains that held him until they no longer kept him here, so that he could go find his missing endangered pack (family) and get them to safety so that he could  _rip-tear-claw_ into whatever had done this.

No, that wasn't right. Give him a stick, a pipe piece, something he could hit with, and that would do, there was no need to be that vicious-

_Pack HURT-_

Link found that he was scaring himself, these fleeting emotions and sensations strong, just as strong, as anything he was used to feeling as a human.

...

He thought that it would fade away into the background, forgotten about in its absence, when he turned human again in the light. 

He was sorely mistaken. 

The wolf merely waited, lolling contentedly - and sometimes, not so much so, although those were usually the times when Link was unhappy anyway - under the surface.

When battle-honed instincts resulted in the raising of the hairs on the back of his neck, the tensing of his muscles was like the raising of his hackles, and the first time he caught himself growling gutturally in the midst of battle he threw himself off, not able to block a slash in time and ending up having to get it bandaged, not bad enough for potions but painful enough to cause a nuisance, and a reminder of why it was a bad idea to get distracted in the middle of a fight.

He whined at the back of his throat when they touched his wounds, and he pretended not to notice, hoping that if he acted as though nothing were wrong, no one would think it was anything to be worried over.

...

It was easy to forget, with Midna. 

She knew everything, after all. She'd been with him for every fight, every impromptu bath and every time he'd reluctantly stolen the meat from someone's window when he'd been starving and didn't have the mouth to ask permission first (he promised himself he'd pay them back later, and he did).

She treated him exactly the same regardless what form he was in - Link was merely Link.

Sometimes, it was far easier just to pretend that was the way things were, that there was no line between the wolf and the human. And perhaps, there wasn't really any line after all - after all, he  _was_ still himself. He simply had the instincts of a killer.

Which, he realised after one particularly messy series of dungeon rooms and a gruelling fight with a monster that, once again, he had to look in the eye in order to deal with it, wasn't that far off.

It wasn't too bad, though. They might be killers, but they (the wolf and the Hylian) were both just as tired by all this as the other, both just as ready for it to be over, to go back to pack and safety and pups.

He curled up on a spare bed in Kakariko, back against the wall, sword and shield close to hand, trusting his instincts to wake him up if there was any danger, and Midna, watching over him from his shadow, if they were somehow not enough.

...

The wolf, over time, became easier and easier to slip in and out of, the mindset of one slipping, sliding into and out of the other like turning the sand this way or that in an hourglass. It was all the same mind, simply a slightly different body for it to inhabit. 

His human logic made it easier to solve puzzles and make his way around tricky areas, while his wolf instinct gave him hunches that now came as second nature rather than something he had to convince himself to follow through.

The Master Sword was a reassurance at his side, if he ever needed one. If he remembered upon walking into Kakariko or Ordon or the Castle Town itself how much destruction he had meted out with his hands, his sword, his  _teeth_ , then he would touch it and remember the legends that he knew to be true - that the sword he now wielded was known as the Blade of Evil's Bane. 

He would do no harm to those who were not monsters, to those who mattered to him, to those were were of Hyrule. He was no danger to anyone. He was just a wolf who sometimes wore human clothing, that was all, a wolf that had hands to gesture with and a mouth to speak with.

...

He wondered, thought that perhaps this would all fade away along with the Twilight and the curse it had upon the land. That in time, it would become a distant memory, a tale to tell to children as though it had happened to some far-off distant hero of the past, who had walked on four legs and talked to the cats and horses.

He was wrong, of course.

The mirror shattered, Midna gone. The Twilight realm lost forever to those of the Light.

Zelda knew. She had always known, she had seen him with her own two eyes. She who he had fought against, alongside, was now _Queen_.

Everything seemed muted, somehow, yet still alive at the same time. Loss of one thing echoed the loss of another. 

He could no longer hear the dogs or cats or Epona, but he still picked them up and scratched their ears and when he looked his horse in the eye, sometimes he could swear he knew exactly what she was thinking, although that was probably because he'd known her the longest.

He smelled horse and hay and spring water when he nuzzled into Ilia's embrace, remembering the time when her scent had brought him to her, making him half wish that he could still track down those same scents the same as he had back then, simply to know that if any of his pack (family, they were his village, his family, not his pack, not anymore) went missing again, he could find them.

He whined when she let go, and forgot that there might be anything strange about the not-quite-human way that it sounded, because he'd already lost one person close to his heart, he couldn't bear to lose another so soon.

The wolf, just as had always been the case, hadn't gone anywhere. There wasn't anything to do about it, either - after all, there was no use attempting to extricate one part of himself away from the other. Link was Link, no matter what form he took, no matter how he took care of the enemies that might want to harm his family-

_Pack, they would always, somewhere deep inside of him, always be his pack, now, though._

**Author's Note:**

> I'd wanted to either read or write something with a TP Link that's a proper werewolf after the events of the game, but those ideas haven't got anywhere yet. This came to me as a sort of train of thought thing beginning with the first lines in the meantime.


End file.
